Neighborhoods
Kevin promises to make Pittsburgh......FIRST IN NEIGHBORHOODS
We'll promote and renew our greatest assets -- all 88 of them -- by: enhancing our pools, playgrounds and community centers; improving our business districts; cleaning and paving our streets; putting more police officers on the best; launching comprehensive new green initiatives; making our parks and trails what they should be -- the envy of every big city in the country.
NEIGHBORHOOD INVESTMENT REMARKS
Kevin Acklin | October 13, 2009
Thank you for being here this morning.
The Strength of Pittsburgh
I was born in South Oakland. But when I was ten years old, I moved to the south hills neighborhoods of Pittsburgh. My Mom, who was working herself to the bone to raise my brothers and me on her own, remarried, and we moved to a little house just across the way and over the hill in Banksville. I remember that, though I missed my old neighbors, I felt right at home — in a wonderful collection of proud, tight-knit, working-class neighborhoods.
This is the strength of Pittsburgh — the pride, the community, the safety that comes from, living in a tight-knit neighborhood where everyone knows everyone else. We must recognize this one fact — that our neighborhoods are our strongest asset — and investing in them is the only way to grow our city.
But, as our neighborhoods have fallen into decline — with shuttered store fronts, abandoned houses, and now closing libraries — so too has the allure, the pull of our city to young parents looking for safe, strong communities in which to raise their families. Time and again, the Mayor has responded with rhetoric, not action.
We have 310,000 residents trying to support an infrastructure built for a million people. We can't pay our bills — whether for the pension fund, debt payments, public safety investments, or cost of living raises for city employees — because we’ve lost residents, and with them tax revenue, as the cost of running the city remains almost the same.
If we’re going to stem the tide of population loss in Pittsburgh, and if we’re going to bring more of our people home, then we must invest in the neighborhoods first. We must preserve and restore the amenities to Pittsburgh that make our city an attractive destination for young families. That will be my top priority as Mayor.
Keeping Our Neighborhoods Safe
I’ve already announced some of my plans to protect our neighborhoods. As your next mayor, I’ll put 200 additional police officers on the streets in my first term, and I’ll re-focus the URA on neighborhood investments rather than on large-scale, corporate developments that sit downtown or along the shores.
Just a few months ago, I announced my plan to take on the abandoned housing problem we have in this city. I called on Mayor Ravenstahl to get serious about abandoned housing, and to tear down problem houses like the one at 446 Ivondale Street in Greenfield, where an 11 year-old girl was raped. To this day, that house is still standing, residents are still complaining about it to 311, and the Mayor, though he promised that house would come down, has done nothing. There are hundreds of 446 Ivondales in this city. All of them pose a threat to our public safety, and all of them must come down.
Today, I’m here to announce more new plans for neighborhood investment.
Revamping BBI
Revamping the Bureau of Building Inspection will be my top priority in the neighborhoods. We will begin to realize those changes by investing $1 million annually from the URA into BBI — to hire and train more staff, to improve technology, and to decentralize the BBI offices into the police zones. The URA is sitting on $416 million in assets, and committing even half of those assets to neighborhood development programs, instead of large-scale corporate developments, would be a substantial investment in our city.
One year ago this month, the ICA released an audit of BBI that said the bureau was “severely distressed.” The report detailed a plan for remaking the bureau to be more effective and responsive to Pittsburghers.
The very next day, the Mayor held a press conference, reassuring us that he had a plan, and that he would begin moving forward with it immediately. Four months later, the City Controller released another report criticizing BBI for its massive backlog of complaints that weren't being addressed. One year later, the abandoned houses are still up, the complaints are still unanswered, BBI is still in distress, and our neighborhoods are still suffering. Now Mr. Ravenstahl has proposed an additional 10% budget cut. We can do better than this — and under an Acklin administration, we will.
The Main Street Project
Next, we’ll launch what I’m calling The Main Street Project — a four-year commitment to bring at least one development project or program to each of our city's 88 neighborhoods. No one, and no neighborhood, will be left behind in my administration. I’ll make sure that our development dollars are spent for the benefit of all taxpayers. This program will fund new sidewalks and street corners, maintain our parks and pools, redevelop our community centers and help to save our libraries.
We will also give special attention to our main streets in distress — districts that have lost businesses, or libraries, or have seen a rise in crime in vandalism The Main Street Project will work to stabilize our business districts, to make sure the’re being occupied by businesses that serve the public like grocery stores, pharmacies, and libraries, and to attract young families to our neighborhoods.
One-Stop Shop for Business Growth
Finally, my administration will promote small business growth in Pittsburgh by creating a “One-Stop-Shop” for prospective business owners in our city. The permitting and paper-work now required to develop or start a business in Pittsburgh post an incredible burden — and the process is so decentralized that if you want to open a shop in Pittsburgh you have to visit several offices, file dozens of pieces of paper, and spend weeks, if not months, hunting down your paperwork and making sure it’s processed. We must streamline this process, allowing all of the city's business development resources to be located in one office.
We must also encourage our local business owners to take advantage of the resources available to them through the Small Business Administration and the Small Business Development Centers in and around Pittsburgh. By creating links between our small businesses and these resources, we can lower the rate of turnover in our business districts and create more stable, prosperous neighborhoods for our city residents.
The work that needs to be done in our neighborhoods will not be easy, and it will not happen over night. But we need stronger leadership, and a stronger voice for the neighborhoods on Grant Street, to make it happen. We need a Mayor who cares about, and is committed to, the neighborhoods. A Mayor who will make sure that investments happen not just downtown and along the shores, but in our own backyards. That’s what the people of Pittsburgh deserve, and what they will get, from me as their next Mayor.
Kevin Acklin | July 14, 2009
Good morning. Thank you for being here.
Pittsburgh was once a city of 700,000 residents. Today, we’re just over 300,000. With that significant decline in population comes an equally significant decline in our housing occupancy. As a result, too many neighborhoods in this city are plagued by abandoned properties.
They’re a source of public safety concerns. They’re a haven for illegal drug activity. As we saw in Greenfield just a few weeks ago, they’re the scenes of terrible assaults on our children. As we’ve seen in Sheraden these past few weeks, they’re an easy target for arsonists who put whole communities at risk. In the past, we’ve even lost city firefighters battling fires at houses that should have long been torn down. We’re putting people’s lives in danger by not addressing this problem.
Abandoned houses diminish the quality of life in our neighborhoods and stand in the way of growing our city. They’re a significant drag on our property values, they discourage investment and development in our neighborhoods, and they leave hard-working families who care deeply about their own properties stranded next to dangerous eyesores.
This administration’s policy of not addressing abandoned housing leaves Pittsburgh with a diminished housing stock, drives families out of the city, reduces the values of the homes of families who do stay, and further erodes the city’s tax base.
Whether I’m door-knocking in Sheraden or Beechview, in Homewood or Manchester, I hear from residents every day who are sick and tired of seeing their complaints, their concerns, their cries for help on this issue ignored. In my work with Renew Pittsburgh, I saw and heard those same things. This issue is so important to me, and to the future of our city, that I’ve chosen to make it the first major public policy announcement of my campaign.
This is a problem that plagues every major urban area in the country. There is no single issue facing an American mayor that has the potential to improve our citizens’ quality of life in so many ways. Solving this problem will make our streets safer, our neighborhoods stronger, and our city more economically competitive. Solving this problem takes real leadership and a systematic plan of action; it takes more than just sending out the Redd Up Crew.
That’s why today, I’m proposing a bold four-point plan that will address head-on the problem of abandoned properties.
1) INVEST EVERY POSSIBLE STIMULUS DOLLAR
We’ve received over $20 million of stimulus money so far. We expect to receive a lot more. With this money will surely come the temptation to reward friends, champion pet projects, and spread the funds for the benefit of a few.
We need to resist that temptation, and spend those stimulus dollars in a way that benefits everyone. That’s why today, I’m proposing a New Deal for Neighborhoods – a plan that will have a truly lasting impact on our city and on our future.
As Mayor, I will put every single stimulus dollar that I’m legally allowed to spend toward solving our long-ignored vacant housing problem.
Spending stimulus dollars on the demolition and refurbishment of abandoned houses will serve as a catalyst, allowing us to set new priorities and become the first city in America to take major strides toward solving its abandoned housing problem.
We’ll never have a chance like this again: to clean up our neighborhoods, improve our quality of life, put properties back on the tax rolls, encourage new development, and put people to work – all with one single investment.
This is an opportunity for every Pittsburgher – not just today, but decades from now – to benefit from these stimulus dollars.
2) REINVEST IN THE BUREAU OF BUILDING INSPECTION
Two years ago, the Mayor began the process of effectively crippling the BBI by firing without cause a well-respected professional who’d served the city for over twenty years. Last year, the ICA issued a report that said the BBI was in “severe distress.” This year, the ICA threatened to revoke its funding, noting that its solutions were not being implemented fast enough. The current BBI workers are good and honest public servants, but it’s clear that they have not been given the support they need to do their jobs effectively.
We’ve seen the reports and recommendations. We’ve heard the promises. Now it’s time to get it done.
3) COMPLETE ABANDONED PROPERTY INVENTORY
4) ABANDONED PROPERTY RESTORATION PROGRAM
I propose that the city enter into partnerships that will allow individual owners and community-based organizations to acquire abandoned properties and pledge to refurbish them. Under these agreements, purchasers of the properties would pledge to complete the renovation and bring the property up to code by a specific deadline, and the city would pledge to provide access to capital through a combination of low-interest loans and tax credits, as well as true coordination on addressing code and zoning issues.
This plan would increase the quality of the city’s housing stock, put homeowners and community groups in charge of rehabilitating the home, and attract more residents to live in the City.
How many neighborhoods have to crumble, how many houses have to burn down, how many lives and properties have to be endangered, before we take this problem seriously as a city? If we implement this plan, we won’t have to find out.
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